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BY MARY MCGUIRE
ANCHOR JASMINE BAILEY
More than 30 people have died in a clash between police officers and striking platinum mine
workers near Johannesburg, South Africa. Here’s Sky News with more on the killings that has
many South Africans shocked and dismayed.
“Police opened fired on drill operators who were armed with machetes and sticks when
they ignored orders to disperse. Forensic teams are now gathering evidence. Automatic
weapons were used during the violence.”
The miners’ protest was allegedly about wages, but the violence appears to have been
ignited by tensions between the dominant National Union of Mineworkers and the newly minted
Association of Mineworkers and Construction Workers. The New York Times writes...
“The strike and the government’s iron-*** response are emblematic of the frustration
with the slow pace of transforming South Africa’s largely white-owned business establishment...”
According to the Christian Science Monitor, the attack is the bloodiest South Africa has
seen since the end of apartheid in the 90s. Martin Plout, the Africa editor at the BBC
World Service says not a lot has changed in the eyes of South Africans.
“Look you promised us everything, yes you have delivered us democracy, but you have
not delivered ordinary things that ordinary people want. For example, a few months ago
we were shown that for 6 months in one province, no school books were delivered to pupils in
schools.”
CNBC explains the clash could have reverberations across the world.
“Those rather disturbing pictures that we’ve seen and events unfolding will also be making
other miners rethink their long term investments into the country unless of course they can
get a control on the situation.
South African President Jacob Zuma publicly decried the shootings, and “said he had
“instructed law enforcement agencies to do everything possible to bring the situation
under control and to bring the perpetrators of violence to book.”